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Q3 Smartphone Market Shares and Prelim Estimate of Full Year 2017 Top 5 (plus installed base as always)

Time for some numbers. The average of the big analyst houses gives us a count of total smartphone market in Q3 globally of 383.1 million units. That is up 3% vs one year ago and up 7% vs the previous quarter ie Q2. We are on pace for something around 1.6B total smartphones sold this year, perhaps a bit under. The migration rate of new phone sales to smartphones is now at 82%. Because we have 3 quarters of data and the industry is relatively stable, I can also give you a preliminary projection for full year market shares (Top 5).

So lets do the Top 10. This is what the market looked like in the July-Sept quarter for 2017.

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q3 2017

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q2 2017 
1 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  83.4 M . . 21.8% . . . . . . . ( 22.5% ) 
2 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 46.7 M . . 12.2% . . . . . . . ( 11.5% ) 
3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . . 39.1 M . . 10.2% . . . . . . . ( 10.6% ) 
4 (4) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . 33.4 M . . . 8.7% . . . . . . . (   7.8% )
5 (5)  . . . Xiaomi . . . . . .  27.9 M . . . 7.3% . . . . . . . (  6.5% ) 
6 (6) . . . Vivo  . . . . . . . . 26.5 M . . . 6.9% . . . . . . . (   6.0% ) 
7 (7) . . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . 16.6 M . . . 4.3% . . . . . . . (   5.2% )
8 (8) . . . LG . . . . . . . .  . 13.7 M . . . 3.6% . . . . . . . (   3.7% ) 
9 (9) . . . Lenovo .  . . . . . 12.5 M . . . 3.3% . . . . . . . (   3.1% )
10 (10) . Gionee . . . . . . .10.1 M . . . 2.6% . . . . . . .  (   2.6% )
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73.2 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383.1 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 24 Nov 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared


So chart looks the same as in Q2. No changes in any positions (I don't remember that happening ever before since we started monitoring the 'bloodbath' on a quarterly basis at the start of this decade). Goes even more to show that this industry is now stable and 'boring'...

Global OS market share is Android minus iOS. The rest of OS is now under 0.5% so it is rounded off to zero. So easy math. Android is now 87.8% and iOS is 12.2% for this quarter.

As to Installed Base? That is starting to look a lot like Christmas... ie its starting to mimick the situation in new sales for OS.. slowly Android approaches its new sales share and Apple slowly reclines to near its new sales levels, and the other last remaining OS platforms die out even in installed base.

SMARTPHONE INSTALLED BASE AT END OF SEPTEMBER 2017 BY OPERATING SYSTEM

Rank . OS Platform . . . . . . . . . . Units Q3 . . . Market share  Was Q2 2017
1 . . . . All Android . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,660 M . . . 82 % . . . . . . ( 81 %)  
a . . . . . . Pure Android/Play . . . . 1,796 M . . . 55% . . . . . . ( 55%)
b . . . . . . Forked Anroid/AOSP . . . 864 M . . . 27% . . . . . . ( 26%)
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589 M . . . 18 % . . . . . . ( 19 %) 
Others  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 M  . . . . 0 % . . . . . . (   1 %)
TOTAL Installed Base . 3,261 M smartphones (ie 3.3 Billion) in use at end of Q3, 2017

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 24 Nov 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared


Yeah 82/18 is the current split of the 'OS war'. New sales is about 85/15. Apple iPhones had a peak of about 20% market share and this slow decline reflects partly that decline. It is slower than mathematically 'should be' because used iPhones have a better resale market than used generic Android smartphones so the iOS installed base is likely to remain a few points above the actual sales levels of recent 3 years or so. I foresee this pattern to remain for the foreseeable future (say next 5 years at least). If iPhone sells in 13% to 15% range for next few years, then its installed base can be in the 15% to 17% range. The lion's share will of course be Android. Apple's iOS is destined to same niche market future as Mac OS was in PC wars. Most developers will soon only do Android with iOS the possible secondary involvement. This will particularly be true in the 5/6th of the world market where most phones are sold (India just passed the US as a smartphone market, Apple's share in the US is 30%, in India it is 3% - that in a nutshell explains the predicament for Apple - the world growth is all in the Emerging World and iPhones are way too expensive to maintain share there. This means iOS has lost the war and will soon only be a 'rich market OS' while Android is the only 'global' reach market).

PROJECTION FOR FULL YEAR 2017

Lets also take the full year 2017. Since we have 3 quarters of data already, and we can see the market is remarkably stable, I can give a preliminary projection for full year 2017 smartphone market shares. I see it like this:

PRELIMINARY TOP 5 SMARTPHONE UNIT SALES FULL YEAR 2017
(Projection in November 2017)

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Market Share . Was 2016
1 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  21% . . . . . . . ( 20.8% ) 
2 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 14% . . . . . . . ( 14.5% ) 
3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . .10% . . . . . . . (   9.4% ) 
4 (4) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . . 8% . . . . . . . (   6.1% )
5 (6) . . . Vivo  . . . . . . . .  . 6% . . . . . . . (   4.9% ) 

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Projection 24 Nov 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data and TomiAhonen Consulting industry forecasting model.
This table may be freely shared

That is what the market looks like to me, at the end of Q3. If you were wondering who was at Number 5 that I see dropping behind Vivo? That is Xiaomi. They'll be close but I give 5th rank to Vivo (that is also the least confident of these 5 rankings, the others in the Top 4 are pretty well locked in stone and their market shares will not differ more than by one point at the most from how I see it now).

As always, this info may be freely shared.

Apple Quarter and Few Other Items in Smartphone Wars

So Apple gave its results for calendar quarter 3 ie July-September. They sold 46.7 million iPhones, which is up 14% vs previous quarter but this is the normal pattern with the strong swings in Apple annual sales cycle. Last year this time they were up 13% Quarter-on-Quarter so it's very similar performance on the quarter when first new iPhones are released. Year-on-Year is the more meaningful comparison in Apple Quarters and that business is up 3% which is also the rate that the industry is currently growing. Apple's market share currently (preliminary) is 12.9% and they are on pace for an annual market share of about 14.5% which would be flat vs last year. Flat market share would allow for that about 3% unit growth Year-on-Year. Apple made as per usual a huge ton of money. Some analysts were a bit disappointed that the average sales price wasn't quite as astronomical as they had hoped but they still make more money than god. Ho-hum. Nothing to see here. What else is going on?

Samsung said they had monster quarter but didn't give their numbers of units of smartphones sold. Sony once again lowered their annual sales target now to 14.5 million. LG made money elsewhere but not in mobile phones. Xiaomi had a great end to their quarter selling for the first time over 10 million units in one month and have climbed to second bestselling smartphone of India (behind Samsung). Pantech the third-largest South Korean phone manufacturer which recently went bust, was sold (again) as it is being split into parts. HMD's Nokia comeback looking strong, I have separate postings about that.

A few interesting handsets are around that work into a new direction for the stale race in form factors. Razer introduced a gaming-oriented super smartphone in top premium price range. Available in USA and Europe (at least) with some carrier support on both continents (runs on Android of course). Meanwhile ZTE introduced a folding-screen smartphone, the Axon. CAT has done a new release of its super-heavy-duty outdoor smartphone which includes the FLIR camera. And there is a Chinese phone maker, Koobee who are able to take 80 mp pictures (as software gimmicks on far more modest sensors).

Thats about the round-up for today. We'll see what info we get from the big analyst houses and if anyone mentions Nokia already in their surveys of the market. Then we'll wait also for the few other smartphone makers to give what little info they do give us, and I'll do the Q3 results of course.

Revised Early Estimate of Nokia HMD Smartphone Unit Sales Year 2017 - Based on survey of carrier support and various data points (updated)

Our crowd-sourced survey of carrier support to Nokia comeback in smartphones, via HMD and the Android OS, produced the world's first picture of the 'footprint' of where Nokia smartphones are starting to sell. We found sales in 46 countries by October 31, of which 39 countries had moved beyond 'just selling' Nokia at some retailer, to having at least one local telecoms operator/carrier selling at least one Nokia handset. Many carriers did more than that, carrying two or three or all Nokia smartphones; to online marketing (placement at top of website, various online marketing campaigns like Twitter, Facebook etc), to in-store placement and ads, to even heavier ad campaigns in paid media. We found that 10 countries already had reached the point where all local carriers offered at least some level of Nokia smartphone support. And we separated out those where only 'dumbphones' like 3310 were supported. This was about carrier support. We also found that Nokia/HMD had started various major ad campaigns in several markets ranging from billboard ads like on bus stops, to TV advertising in some markets.

I am listing here below the countries and level of carrier support, as I have 'closed' the October month reporting for that blog article, and I now will continue updating 'November additions' to the list onwards from this blog article.

So how good is our crowd-sourced data? HMD CEO Florian Seiche just yesterday reported that Nokia smartphones are now sold in 80 countries. We had discovered 46 of them. Because we were 'only' searching for those countries that had gone beyond 'just selling' Nokia to having carrier support, that number would of course be smaller (and note, it was 39 by our count as of Oct 31) but we also found a few countries where retailers did sell Nokia but carriers were not yet involved, like the USA, Canada, China, Brazil and Argentina.

I would love to know the 'full list of 80' as per HMD and Seiche (maybe such a list will soon be revealed) but they did show a map. It was this map:




Now there is a problem with that map. First off, it does not have 80 countries marked. Secondly, some countries have many dots haha, like the USA with six dots and Australia with three, etc. I think they showed the wrong map, and that was maybe a map of HMD's international office locations or something like that. We don't know. The map had my my count 54 dots marking only 46 countries (haha, and this blog had discovered 46 countries, what a coincidence!)

Our lists have some overlap but are not the same (even after the many dots in the same countries are removed. I mean, Alaska has not by my best understanding, yet declared its independence from the USA...). So there are countries that HMD sees where they have sales that we did not include in our count like Japan, Ecuador, Vietnam, Iran, Morocco, Kenya, DR Congo and Guatemala (or Belize or Honduras, not certain about that one Central American dot). Meanwhile we had found a bunch of countries with carrier support already, that didn't have dots in the HMD presentation like Norway, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, Czech Republic etc.

So it is quite possible that due to some mix-up, the HMD presentation in India to launch the Nokia 2, had accidentally the wrong map 'with the dots' and actually bears no real relevance to the market reach of Nokia smartphones today. Our survey is pretty solid, I have all sources listed of who or what entity found that carrier support, and in many (but not all) cases I went to take a look myself, before I posted the update. I am confident that currently of the 80 countries where HMD is selling Nokia smartphones, at least those 39 countries have gone beyond just selling phones, they have carrier support. And within those countries, the number of carriers so far is quite remarkably strong, 79 carriers already.

For some level of context, when Apple launched the iPhone ten years ago, they set as their TARGET for the end of the first 18 months, to have sales in 70 countries. And in many of those, they only had one carrier per country like AT&T in the USA. HMD has on average 2 carriers per country ALREADY and its only 11 months from their launch.

So far this is all very good news indeed. Now, I made the world's first estimate of the sales levels of Nokia HMD full year sales for this calendar year 2017, and even broke it out per quarter. We have data via IDC for the first two quarters of the year, I then plugged in some reasonable estimates of growth rates and gave my first stab at the full-year numbers on 11 October, 2017. I arrived at my first annual forecast number to be around 7.5 million units this year for HMD/Nokia and to be selling 3.5 million smartphones by the fourth Quarter for Christmas, by which time they would be having about 1% market share globally (up from 0.7% reported by IDC at mid-year).

NEW ESTIMATE FOR FULL YEAR SALES 2017

Since then a lot of info has come in, and in particular this wonderful support by my readers and Twitter followers to produce the crowd-sourced survey of the level of carrier support in many of HMD's first countries. And THAT information is truly golden. I can now revise my first estimate, for a better estimate (will likely have less error vs reality) and for fans of Nokia also a 'better' estimate in that the numbers have gone up.

I am also able to give a VERY VERY rough split REGIONALLY where the Nokia smartphones are currently sold. Isn't that nice? So lets first take my revised HMD Nokia Android smartphone annual sales, which is now like this:

REVISED ROUGH ESTIMATE OF HMD NOKIA QUARTERLY ANDROID SMARTPHONE SALES IN 2017
Q1 (China only) sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.1 million (IDC, calculated)
Q2 (June only) world launch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 million (IDC, calculated)
Q3 (world 3 months) about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 million (TomiAhonen Consulting estimate/revised)
Q4 (2 new models added, Christmas Qtr) about . . 5.7 million (TomiAhonen Consulting, preliminary forecast/revised)
FULL YEAR 2017  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 million (TomiAhonen Consulting, preliminary forecast/revised)

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting preliminary estimate and forecast on Oct 13, 2017 based on IDC, Nokia Power User data, and HMD statement. Forecast has been revised based on HMD press event 31 October 2017 and CDB Blog reader crowd-sourced survey of Nokia carrier support globally plus other data. This is the revised estimate as of 1 November 2017.
This table may be freely shared


I have moved my Q3 estimate up from 2.5M to 3.4M based on the survey data we had and attempting to correlate with info like 'India is one of the 3 best markets' etc. I have then revised my Q4 estimate from 3.5M to 5.7M partly to have organic growth we witnessed already in the changes to countries that didn't have carrier support at mid-October but added it by end of the month, as well as various new ad campaigns popping up; and then added 6 weeks of Nokia 2 sales from mid November to end-of-year. I believe Nokia 2 becomes the first HMD smartphone that will be sold at the rate of 1 million units per month. So I added 1.5M out of the Nokia 2 sales on top of what I had otherwise.

I have not seen any other estimates of Nokia/HMD sales levels, nor any other actual measured market data since the IDC numbers in early October. I am hopeful that as we get the Q3 data by the various big analyst houses, hopefully a few will make some comments about Nokia to give us more guidance. I do believe that the data currently suggest that Nokia is roughly selling smartphones in a similar level as Apple and Micromax in India for example, and thus we could find some India-focused analyst comment on that race (in the bottom tier of the Top 10). Or similarly, in both East and Western Europe Nokia will be now safely inside the Top 10. There could be a Europe-oriented analyst house that could comment on what level of Nokia smartphone sales they see in their research and that could start to trickle out during the Christmas quarter if indeed Nokia is climbing up the ladder in the Top 10 in Europe...

WHAT ARE BEST MARKETS

So in the HMD press event they mentioned that India is one of HMD's three best markets. I wonder what would be the other three, in absolute volume terms (not as a percentage of sales by population, that would almost certainly be Finland at this stage). I think our crowd-sourced info gives very strong clues about what are the 5 best markets for HMD Nokia smartphones. Apart from India, I'll add Russia as 'certain' to be in the Top 3, and thus both India & Russia are in the Top 5. The last of the Top 3 markets is too close by my model that I can't separate them with reasonable confidence. So I'll do the Top 5 instead. The Top 5, not in rank of size, but alphabetically are:


ESTIMATE OF FIVE COUNTRIES WITH BEST NOKIA SMARTPHONE UNIT SALES
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
China
Germany
India
Indonesia
Russia
Source TomiAhonen Consulting Estimate 1 November 2017 based on public data and crowd-sourced survey of carrier support globally
This data may be freely shared


Those are HMD's best-selling markets currently. They each will have unit sales in Q3 (July-Sept) somewhere in the range of about 150,000 to 650,000 units of Nokia smartphones sold per country, per quarter (not per month). These five countries account currently for nearly half (probably around 47%) of total Nokia HMD smartphone sales. So please do not go looking for big success stories of Nokia in the USA or Britain or Finland. If you find ANY info about these five countries, they will tell you BEST about how HMD is doing. China, Germany, India, Indonesia and Russia. 

WHERE IS LOCAL SUPPORT STRONGEST?

Obviously those five countries are all large by their populations too. But note that two 'big population' nations are missing - USA and Brazil. Now if you want to see where Nokia brand is being most warmly received and has a good chance of being a Top 5 bestselling phone for Christmas? That is directly derived from our crowd-sourced listing. Those 10 countries where all carriers already offer Nokia smatphones. There the local domestic market is going to be doing best Nokia sales, proportionately vs the competition. These are mostly small nations but look at the list:

ESTIMATE OF TEN COUNTRIES WHERE NOKIA BRAND DOING BEST BY MARKET SHARE RE-CAPTURE CURRENTLY
(Listed In Alphabetical Order)
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Finland
Hungary
Netherlands
Russia
Serbia
Slovenia
South Africa
Switzerland
Source TomiAhonen Consulting Estimate 1 November 2017 based on public data and crowd-sourced survey of carrier support globally
This data may be freely shared

These ten countries will have Nokia brand seriously contesting for Top 5 position for Christmas and can with some luck, perhaps even hit some Top 3 rankings there (especially Finland). Now lets take a stab at a regional split. Please again, this is VERY VERY preliminary but I have attempted to do a 'best fit' of the 3.4 million units into the regional split by the discovered levels of carrier support. I find the 9 regions to be as follows (ranked by size)


ESTIMATE OF NINE GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS RANKED BY Q3 2017 NOKIA SMARTPHONE SALES
Western Europe . . . . 800,000
Asia Emerging . . . . . 750,000
Eastern Europe . . . . 700,000
China . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Middle East . . . . . . . 200,000
Latin America . . . . . 150,000
Asia-Pacific Rich . . . 50,000
North America . . . . . 50,000
TOTAL in Q3 . . . . 3,400,000
Source TomiAhonen Consulting Estimate 1 November 2017 based on public data and crowd-sourced survey of carrier support globally
This data may be freely shared


So that's how I see the Nokia comeback footprint. The early heavy lifting is done in Europe, West and East, plus India and Indonesia. China is underperforming by its weight (very fiercely competitive market there, domestically and the burned carrier relations are still hurting). Very encouraged by how strong Africa is, am a bit concerned about how weak Middle East is. Latin America is a powerhouse waiting to be activated and those steps are apparently only just starting now. (and obviously you don't need to care about the US market, very expensive and home of Apple, let Samsung fight there, and concentrate first on the 'low hanging fruit' where the iPhone is not even in play and where the Nokia 2 will fly off the shelves from India to Nigeria to Indonesia)

THE CROWD-SOURCED LISTING FOR NOVEMBER

I will also keep on updating on this blog page now, the crowd-sourced listing of where Nokia smartphones have achieved carrier support. Please do add your home country info if you have any, that isn't yet indicated. As I write this post on November 1, 2017, this listing is the 'final' count as of October 31, 2017. I expect this list will grow significantly during the month of November, and you can always go back to the original listing to see how it was 'last month'.

11 OUT OF 47 COUNTRIES WITH FULL CARRIER SUPPORT OF NOKIA SMARTPHONES
In Alphabetical Order

Bulgaria . . . . . . . All Carriers (3 of 3 carriers advertise Nokia, also demand is exceeding supply, source reader 'Vlad')
Czech Rep . . . . . All Carriers (O2, T-Mobile & Vodafone, source reader 'Slavek Cerny')
Finland . . . . . . . . All Carriers (DNA & Elisa advertising, sources reader 'Asko' & Elisa, Telia sells, source Telia website)
Hungary . . . . . . All Carriers (Telenor, Vodafone & T-Mobile are all advertising Nokia, source reader 'zlutor')
Netherlands . . . All Carriers (Nokia 8 is on all Dutch networks, also bus stop advertising, source reader 'Winter')
Russia . . . . . . . . All Carriers (TV ads on air, all carrier shops include Nokia smartphones, source Twitter follower Anton Namestnikov @Annamest)
Serbia . . . . . . . . All Carriers (MTS, VIP & Telenor each carry 2 of the 3 in some mix Nokia 3, 5 & 6; source Nokiamob)
Slovenia . . . . . . All Carriers (All carriers have at least 2 of the models 3, 5, 6, source Twitter follower kpkp @0kp0kp) 
South Africa . . . All Carriers (Vodacom & CellC 3 each, MTN one Nokia model, source Twitter follower 'Ntete Metseka' aka @GoSharpShooter)
Switzerland . . . All Carriers (all major carriers offering Nokia including among their 'brand list' feature, source reader 'Joe Fish')
Thailand . . . . . All Carriers (source Bangkok Post article of Thailand smartphone market)



29 OUT OF 47 COUNTRIES WITH PARTIAL CARRIER SUPPORT OF NOKIA SMARTPHONES
In Alphabetical Order

Australia . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Vodafone carries Nokia 3,5, 6. Source Vodafone)
Austria . . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (A1 advertising Nokia 6, source Twitter follower @Digitreo) 
Belgium . . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Proximus advertises three models, Telenet one; but Proximus store out of all three but have 3310 in stock, source reader 'luvr')
Chile . . . . . . . . . . 3 Carriers (Entel, Movistar & Wom have Nokia, source reader 'Rino')
Colombia . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Movistar sells Nokia 3. Also retailers selling 5 & 6, source Twitter follower Hernan Ramirez @HernanRamirez)
Croatia . . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Croatia Telecom & Tele2, + 3rd carrier VIP sells dumbphone 3310, plus largest retailer, sources reader 'robig' & Nokiamob)
Denmark . . . . . . 3 Carriers (Telenor, Yousee & Three sell Nokia, source reader 'Elo Petersen')
France . . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Bouygues has 3, Orange 2, 5 & 8. (third carrier SFR only does 3310, fourth nothing), also TV ads on air for 8, sources readers 'Phil W' & 'Michel C')
Germany . . . . . . 2 Carriers (T-Mobile has 2 and O2 has 3 models, source reader 'Huber')
Hong Kong . . . . 1 Carrier (CSL plus 3 local retailers advertising Nokia 8, according to my observations)
India . . . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Vodafone marketing 3, 4 & 6 says iGadgetWoman; plus manufacturing locally, source reader 'John A')
Indonesia . . . . . 1 Carrier (Indosat advertising Nokia 3 & 6, plus biggest local retailer source 'Abdul Muis' local manufacturing, source 'John A')
Ireland . . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Three & Vodafone, source David Doherty aka @mHealthInsight on Twitter)
Italy . . . . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (TIM has Nokia 5, also one retail channel, sources Twitter follower Luciano Corinti aka @LucianoCorinti & HMD)
Malaysia . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Digi advertising Nokia 3 & 6, source reader 'Abdul Muis')
Mexico . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Movistar is advertising Nokia 6, via reader 'Rigoberto Calleja') 
New Zealand . . 1 Carrier (Spark carries Nokia 3, 5, 6 & 8. Source Spark)
Nigeria . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (9mobile is advertising Nokia 8, via Twitter follower 'Mister Mobility' aka @moverick)
Norway . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Telenor & Telia sell Nokia, these 2 carriers (out of 3) control 73% of Norwegian market, sources readers 'Ola' & 'Knut Yrvin')
Pakistan . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Jazz offers Nokia 5 & 6, source Jazz; TV ads on air for Nokia smartphones, source Twitter follower Harry Jarn @h_jarn) 
Peru . . . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Movistar Nokia 3, Entel Nokia 5, source reader Antonio Lazo de la Vega)
Poland . . . . . . . 3 Carriers (3 out of 4 carriers selling Nokia, heavily advertised. Source reader 'Mike')
Portugal . . . . . . 2 Carriers (NOS & Vodafone have Nokia 3, 5 & 8 models, source reader 'Pedro')
Romania . . . . . . 3 Carriers (Vodafone, Orange & Telekom each carry Nokia, sources Vodafone & reader 'Romania')
Spain . . . . . . . . 3 Carriers (3 of 4 carriers are advertising Nokia 3, source reader 'Luis Calvo')
Sweden . . . . . . . 2 Carriers (Telia and Telenor selling Nokia, also Elgiganten the largest retailer has it plus other retailers source reader 'John A')
Taiwan . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Far EasTone Telecom, source reader 'zmx')
Turkey . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Vodafone running ads for Nokia, source reader 'John A')
UAE . . . . . . . . . 1 Carrier (Etisalat has 3 Nokia models, source reader 'Abdul Muis')
UK . . . . . . . . . . 3 Carriers (EE, Virgin & Vodafone sell, also largest retailer Carphone Warehouse, sources reader 'Mart' and Android Authority)

6 OUT OF 47 COUNTRIES WITH NO CARRIER SUPPORT YET
Argentina . . . . No Carriers (no carriers yet, by my survey of websites of major Argentinian carriers)
Brazil . . . . . . . . No Carriers (no carriers yet, source reader 'Joe Fish')
Canada . . . . . . No Carriers (no carriers, avail on Amazon, source reader 'Wayne Borean')
China . . . . . . . . No Carriers (several retail channels, sources HMD & reader 'John A')
Nepal . . . . . . . . No Carriers (but several independent retailers selling Nokia locally, source Twitter follower Aatish Neupane @aatishnn)
USA . . . . . . . . . No Carriers (no carriers, several retail channels, sources readers 'Jim Glue' and 'John A')


ADDITIONAL 15 COUNTRIES LISTED BY HMD MAP ON WHERE NOKIA SMARTPHONES ALREADY BEING SOLD, NOT INCLUDED IN THE ABOVE
(These may include carrier support, or be only retail support locally; we do not know more details about these countries yet)

Azerbaijan
DR Congo
Ecuador
Gabon
Gambia
Iceland
Iran
Japan
Kenya
Macau
Madagascar
Morocco
Philippines
Tanzania
Vietnam

Above is Tomi Ahonen personal interpretation of the dots on the map as shown by HMD on 31 October 2017. In some cases the dot is difficult to exactly guess, and may indicate a close neighboring country.
PLEASE NOTE - it is possible HMD accidentally showed a faulty map (has for example six dots for the USA). This 'map based' listing is provisional, if better info comes in, we will update it accordingly.


ABOVE listing is crowd-sourced by readers of CDB blog and my Twitter followers. This listing MAY BE freely shared in any media and in any way you want, without any further permissions from me or this blog. Please indicate the DATE you saw the data, as this listing will likely grow over time, with more input from readers and Twitter followers, so your listing has a 'time stamp' on it if you publish it. I'd appreciate a link to this blog if you publish to an online source


So HMD tells us the Nokia smartphones are sold in 80 countries (out of about 210 countries). We have so far found 46 countries by our own survey method, and HMD added via its map, another 15, giving 61 of the 80 countries as having been discovered. Out of those 61 countries, at least 39 countries have 'carrier support' so far, meaning at least one local telecoms operator/carrier offers at least one Nokia smartphone, for sale at its website or store. In many cases the carrier support is deeper, including more phones sold, actual marketing support offered, etc. In total at least 79 carriers have started to support Nokia smartphone sales (out of a global carrier community of about 800). We will attempt to discover all countries and update the above listing as information comes in.

What does this all mean? Google attempted to launch a smartphone and failed, then bought Motorola with which it failed, then launched another smartphone, with which it is doing trivial-scale global sales today. Microsoft attempted to be a mobile phone seller and bought Danger, then stopped selling those but bought Nokia and attempted to sell Lumia, and found it can't succeed in this game. A vast array of global IT giants have failed in smartphones from Ericsson to Siemens to Motorola to Palm to Blackberry to Dell to HP to Pantech to on, and on, and on, and on. Apple was able to crash into the race and succeed. Apple started ten years ago. Among a huge array of failures in the past decade, Apple is the only truly bright spot, although Xiaomi just might be the second newcomer who succeeds in getting into the Top 10 and staying there (Xiaomi was briefly number 3 before it fell out of the Top 10). Other brands like Huawei and ZTE have been in the handset biz long before Apple did its first iPhone, so they don't count as 'newcomers' even if you never heard of them until a few years ago. So who is there the real way to compare? Only really Apple. 

Apple sold 10 million iPhones in its first year. Apple was only able to get to 70 countries of retail reach and carrier support in 18 months from its launch in 2007. HMD is the only other company EVER to get to 70 countries inside 18 months (actually 80 countries inside 11 months) and this is FAR FAR better say, than Xiaomi, if you like that brand. When we count CARRIER SUPPORT then HMD is FAR ahead of where Apple was, at this point in the launch of the iPhone. My forecast now says HMD will go past 10 million units by the end of December. I may be well off (for better or worse) but even if HMD gets CLOSE to ten million, they would be the only other company in the past 10 years, to have a 'succesful entry' into the smarthphone race. And before you say 'but they had the Nokia brand' then yeah, Google tried with the Motorola brand, Lenovo tried with the Motorola brand, HP tried with the Palm brand as did TCL. And Microsoft tried previously with the Nokia brand. Its not the Nokia brand. It is the smart management and marketing brilliance at HMD. If they do get reasonably close to 10 million, it is cause to celebrate it as an EXCELLENT launch. If HMD manage to do BETTER than the iPhone in Apple's first year in this industry, then yes, it would be a world-record launch, what we are now witnessing. Or want another comparison? Sony was the third largest smartphone maker in the world only a few years ago. Sony just lowered their annual sales target to 14.5M smartphones (down from 15.5M). That suggests quarterly sales levels at Sony of 3.8M units. Now consider that HMD estimate for the current quarter of 3.4M. And if the trend holds and HMD get to 5.7M or even near it, would mean the Return of Nokia would pass old rival Sony (recently of SonyEricsson) already before Christmas in unit sales.

And one more thing... the 10 million milestone. I do think HMD will celebrate that moment when they pass it. I expect it to happen in December of 2017 (cumulative 10M shipments) but it could happen as early as now, November, or be pushed to early in the new year like January. And there is no guarantee they'd mention the number except that it would be a gigantic performance metric and nice round number - I do think they'll get that number out the moment the can claim it. We may well hear the 10M number now in the coming weeks. Would be epic.

Do pay attention. HMD and Nokia are no flash-in-the-pan. They are for real. This is VERY VERY solid start.